berkeley, berkeley class, business model, business model canvas, customer development, engineering, lean launchpad, lean startup, startup, steve blank

1. Cutting edge wireless
sensor chip looking for a
perfect vertical application
in IoT space
Recruiting solution to improve
pre-screening for candidates
without relevant work
experience
From week 1... To week 10...
92 interviews
8 industries
5 iterations +
1 major pivot
500+ hours invested
30+ hypothesis
invalidated
Monolets CareerFIT

2. We started the LLP experience helping a Berkeley PhD commercialize a new IoT
chip
50x cheaper
Help in finding an application to validate market appetite for the technology
20x smaller
20x less power
consumption

3. The team had wide experience in IoT-)
Ilya Bukeev Borja EdoKiran Kondru Eric Manalac
Undergrad:
Physics and Math
Grad:
FTMBA @ Haas
Undergrad:
Electrical engineering
Grad:
EWMBA @ Haas
Undergrad:
Civil engineering
Grad:
FTMBA @ Haas
Undergrad:
Math and CS
Consultant @
McKinsey Moscow
Consultant @
Accenture Madrid
Engineer @
Intel Sacramento
Mobile Games Dev
(Top 3 GMIC)

4. However, our LLP journey was not as easy as we thought it would be
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Team’smood
+
-
Week
PIVOT AWAY
FROM MONOLETS
Brainstormed
a long list of
potential
applications
Wine
solution is
shut down
Big Biotech is
interested in
knowing more
Biotech discards
Monolets
Realize we don’t speak the
customers’ language
“What is your network
stack?”
Start exploring first
application: Wine
Temperature
Changing
discovery process
Let us tell you our story

5. First week, first challenge and first
lesson
Getting ready to research and talk to people
Founder doesn’t want to share info
We have to research for similar products in the market.
Shallow knowledge of product, market pains and
competitive advantage
LEARNING 1
Lack of support from
founder makes it really
hard to gain expertise, set
interviews and even talk to
customers

6. - Humidity
and
temperature
sensing
Refineries
Week 0: several parallel business model canvases
to explore
On week 1 team was
excited to explore
multiple industries
For each
application team
designed a
separate BMC
Monolets
- Air quality monitoring
- Preventive maintenance
of equipment
- Disaster prevention
Smart cities
- Air quality
monitoring
- Smart
parking
Supply chain
- Food freshness
monitoring
- Vaccines monitoring
- Industrial assets tracking
Wine and beer
- Wine bottle history
tracking
- Craft beer quality
tracking
Agriculture
- Smart
sneakers
- Smart sport
clothes
Apparel

7. … and spent 4 weeks interviewing players in several industries and constantly
redrawing business canvas
Value proposition for Oil & Gas Value proposition for Pharma
Value proposition for Agricultural IOT

8. Refineries
Week 5 weeks passed: no success….
Based on 50+
interviews team
rejected all available
solutions
Team was
exhausted,
demoralized and
completely stuck
Monolets
Smart cities
Supply chain
Already done or
our tech does
not help
Wine and beer
Agriculture Apparel
?
Strong competition or our
tech does not help
Established
collaboration
with Nike
No burning need
Small market of
upscale wine
Long sale cycle
No advantage over
existing technology
No burning need
Very fragmented
market

9. In week 6, we officially admit defeat on finding the killer app
Failed testing idea after idea
until one showed market interest
How have other
companies with a new
technology found the
killer applications?
Do you think you are
smarter than market?!
Wine Supply
Chain
Oil &
Gas
Vineyards
BioTech Cold
Chain
Manufacturing
Smart Cities
random?

10. We realized that many companies with a technology breakthrough had let their
customers tell them which ones where the killer applications
Build a horizontal platform and let users build
applications on top of it
Market your new breakthrough through press
release and let customers come to you
Press release
1000s of patents on usage
$800m in annual revenues
Press release for exact same
Product (low power IoT chip)
Focus on HW technology: too technical.
The team had neither expertise nor support from
founder to speak the new customers’ language
Works well with big corporations
Technology not there yet
Founder unwilling to disclose any info
New interviews: much more
technical… and painful
Customer: What
is your network
stack??
Best practice 1: Best practice 2:

11. Week 4-6
LEARNING 2
A new technology with many potential
applications has a different discovery process.
Let the customer tell you the killer applications
instead of exploring one by one
LEARNING 3
The team has to have expertise in the product to
be able to pivot and talk to customers with a
minimum of credibility, especially if you’re
selling HW

12. Week 7: We finally Pivot
LEARNING 5
Choose the project
wisely: both in terms of
expertise and passion
LEARNING 4
Sunk costs are sunk.
Don’t get attached to an
idea if it is not working!
Team expertise
Teampassion
Recruiting platform for
candidate skills
assessment
P2P career advising platform
Team picked
this idea for
pivot
Review improvement solution for specialized
products (roller skates, wet suits, etc)
Community based craiglist

13. - Companies with large volumes
of applicants need to reject a lot
of people before interviews
- Hiring managers (or HRs) have
difficult time to differentiate
candidates without prior relevant
experience
Week 7. Based on interviews we decided to focus on the most critical process
part - pre-screening
Standard job application process (from candidate’s perspective)
Optional telephone
interview
- MBA switching jobs apply to
20-88 positions
- Application process takes up to
1 hour for each company
- Switching candidates try to
show relevant skills in cover
letter
- Only about 10% of applications
are translated into interviews (for
MBAs switching to another role)
- There is no feedback after
reject
- Interviews are stressful
- No feedback after
unsuccessful interviews
- Many small companies
struggle to attract large amount
of applicants
Painpointsof
candidate
Painpointsof
hiringmanager
- Interviews are taking a lot of
time
APPLICATION
Preparation of CV
Preparation of cover letter
Application online
PRE-SCREENING
HRs and/or hiring managers
select candidates for
interview
INTERVIEWS
JOB OFFER
We focused on Pre-screening phase
● Based on our personal painful experience
● Based on confirmed pain points
● No company is solving the problem
- Job offer is expiring quickly
- Significant share of offers
declined
We believe that
hiring managers
should be targeted
before candidates

14. Week 8: we narrowed down with candidates
Our first customers
● MBAs
● Applying to PM
● Without PM
experience
● Tech company
Roles
● Product management
● Project management
● Business analyst
● Supply chain manager
● ...
Candidate types
● MBAs switching roles
● Non-MBA professionals switching roles
● Recent college graduates
Industries
● Technology
● Banking
● Consulting
● NGO
● ….
After experience with
Monolets we decided
to narrow down as
soon as possible
Selection was based
on ease of access
and significance of
customer need

15. MVP was critically important for interviews
To 10 pages pdf report with real candidate assessment on week 7...
From abstract wireframe
on week 6….
● Was too abstract
● Did not help to test
hypotheses
● Focused on critical product aspect (assessment + summary)
● Hiring managers provided specific feedback

16. Main interview learnings
careerFITExpectations Interview discoveries
MBAs switching to new roles would like to
reduce time spent on applications
Main concern is not time spent but
conversion rate: application -> interview
PMs skills are universal so we can use
similar assessments for different
companies
Startups often don’t look for PMs with
experience on large established products.
They need different set of skills
PM hiring managers would like to have
assessment additional to CV and Cover
Letter.
Report should include summary scores +
raw data for potential cross check
Confirmed.
Hiring managers are willing to have
additional assessment but would like
reliable summary scores to safe effort
Rejection
Confirmation

17. Next steps
Where we are right now and next steps
Team members are planning to pursue career options other than CareerFIT
Part of the team is considering to continue with CareerFIT
Current status
Team partially finished with right side of BMC
Gained good insights on the pains experienced by HR/Hiring managers and switching
MBAs -> found initial validation for our MVP
Team has 3rd iteration of MVP based on customer interviews and feedback
We don't have the data today to ascertain the product market fit for our product but
we believe that there is one (at least for large and mid size tech companies)